New service ship for nuclear waste nearly ready
Russia will soon have a brand new vessel for transport of nuclear waste in the Barents Sea. The Italian Fincantieri shipyard is about to finish construction of a vessel with capacity of 720 tons of spent nuclear fuel.
The hull and topside of the vessel are already finished and engines are in place, and now equipment for radiation monitoring is being installed, Rosatomflot writes in a press release. The ship will be launched on water in December.
The vessel will be 84 meters long and 14 meters wide and have a depth of only 4 meters. This will make it possible for the vessel to enter any port on the Kola Peninsula. The vessel will shuttle between Gremikha, the Andreeva Bay, the Saida Bay, Severodvinsk and other naval bases in the Kola Peninsula. By far most of the spent nuclear fuel in the region stems from nuclear-powered submarines.
The vessel is a result of an agreement signed by Russia and Italy in 2003 on cooperation on nuclear safety and scrapping of discarded nuclear submarines. Plans for the vessel are drawn by Russian specialists.
